I’ve just finished Cracking the Code by Thom Hartmann. The book deals with the science and technology of effective communications. The book is an excellent summary of various communication concepts including Neural Linguistic Programing, framing issues and other basics. One example I thought interesting was the way he starts his talks in order to reach visual, auditory and kinesthetic listeners:

"I want to talk to you today about stories that we tell ourselves, the way we view the world, and the way we all feel as Americans."

He discusses "moving away from pain" persuasion strategies compared to "moving toward pleasure" strategies. He says moving toward pleasure has greater success than moving away from pain. Think about that when you are planning your next argument as why the decision maker should find in your favor. Holding out a reward works better than the threat of pain.

He also talks about using "the indirect you" in persuasion. For example, the car salesman might say "some customers have told me, when you buy this car, you have the best car ever made and really feel great driving it." What he has done is to embed in the customer’s unconscious mind that if they buy the car they will have the best car ever made and will really feel great driving it without saying that directly to the customer.

He discusses what I’ve written about before, that is the unconscious mind generally cannot translate multiple layer language information as the conscious mind can. Research indicates that when you preface a word with a negative such as "not" the unconscious brain does not translate "not." So "not clean" or "not dirty" are heard as "clean" and "dirty" This is a good book with a lot of helpful information.